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The Best Baseball in the World

By Waldo Tejada

Baseball and the Dominican Republic are almost synonymous words in the world of sports. Most Dominicans are more devout to their team than to their church. Dominicans love “La Pelota” and most of them dreamed to become a baseball player at one point of their lives. I, in the other hand, always feared baseball. The national sport was something forced upon me when growing up. I disliked most sports anyways, with the exception of biking for transportation or fun and occasional game of volleyball. Considered by most a geek, I made sure to exalt my imposed title and flaunted my dislike for the game and its fanatics. This might not have been the wisest decision in high school or at home when we got news of my uncle been signed by the Pirates to be a second base.

Later on in life I have the privilege to live with my uncle Ramon for many years and he became a second father to me. My uncle, who only spent a year with the Pirates, was an avid consumer of baseball games on TV and played with the local Midwood team for years in Brooklyn. From living with him and the almost 24 hours baseball television broadcast going on at his house, I started to know the in and outs of the game. I still didn’t comprehend the fanatic part of it, but I got the rules down and was able to make small talk with Tio Ramon about his emotional outburst when something significant happened in the game being televised. For years, I always felt Tio Ramon thought there was something wrong with me because I did not enjoy the game as most Dominican do. As we both grew older, Tio Ramon became less judgmental of my lack of fanaticism for the national sport and I have honored his friendship with extensive research about the game and its cultural influences in the Dominican identity and society.

Part of my research included the couple of dozen historical movies and documentaries made about the game in DR and the many new movies being shot currently, including the ones produced in the country. This research recently opened the door to a great experience when Road Scholar, a mayor educational tour operator in USA, asked me to develop a Baseball themed vacation for their catalog of educational adventures. Coincidentally my good friend Laura Garcia-Godoy was casted as a supporting actress in “El Pelotudo," a movie about an Argentinian boy who dream to play professional baseball and has to fake his identity to train and play in one of the main teams in DR: Las Aguilas Cibaeñas. Laura and I have had similar destiny crossovers, but this was quite extraordinary as we, both Dominicans who were not fanatic about baseball, had to learn a lot about the game to the level of enjoying ourselves in the process and maybe becoming fans of our national sport.

Comparing notes with Laura, I asked her what was the most remarkable experience she took with her from the movie. She commented that as an actress she was humbled "to have ventured into the world of baseball, not what people see during games, but to what happens behind the game and we do not know. The human side of the MBL players, their sacrifices, frustrations and the internal struggle they go through to see their dream materialized; something entirely different from the adrenaline we as the audience experienced in a stadium.” I relate to this statement, as I had been very moved and humbled during the process of designing the vacation program for Road Scholar by discovering the process young Dominicans go through in order to achieve their dreams. In the end my team at Tequia Experiences and I created a vacation package called “The Best Baseball in the World: Life and the Great Game in the Dominican Republic” a 8 days 7 nights program highlighting the history of baseball in DR, including the process of becoming a professional player and the influence of the game in the Dominican culture.

For more info on this vacation package please visit Tequia Experiences or/and Road Scholar.

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